Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce an exhibition by artist Do-Ho Suh. This will be Suh’s first solo show in the United States.
Do-Ho Suh was born in Seoul, Korea in 1962. He received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University. For over a decade, Suh has exhibited work at group exhibitions in both the United States and Korea and could recently be seen in PS1’s “Greater New York” show and “Koreamericakorea” at the Artsonje Center, Korea. Earlier group exhibitions include “Techno/ Seduction” at The Cooper Union, “Do-Ho Suh/ Royce Weatherly” at Gavin Brown, and the 20th São Paulo Biennale. His honors and awards include a Skowhegan Fellowship, Korean Arts Foundation of America Award, and a Chanil Foundation Fellowship. Do-Ho Suh currently lives and works in New York.
Suh’s exhibit at Lehmann Maupin will be a site-specific installation that utilizes the gallery, including floor and walls, to investigate notions of space and relate to the viewer his experience of transcultural displacement. As Suh has stated, “My desire to guard and carry around my very own intimate space makes me perceive space as infinitely movable. I experience space through, and as the movement of displacement. Space, for me, becomes intrinsically transportable and translatable.” This culturally relevant installation will probe into the various dimensions of personal space and its relationship to individuality, collectivity, and anonymity.
Upon arrival, the viewer will encounter an extremely large welcome mat created by hundreds of tiny figures. Much like his wallpaper and prints, the mat involves repetition and subtlety in a most intriguing way. From afar, minor variations in color create the illusion of an anonymous whole. However, upon close inspection, thousands of faces or hundreds of tiny bodies will suddenly be recognized.
In the same vein, the show will culminate in a transformation of the main gallery floor. There, viewers will find themselves physically engaged by walking across a glass floor supported by over 180,000 small plastic figures of both sexes and different races. Separated out, each figure is a fragile entity. As a whole, the thousands of tightly packed figures are capable of withholding tremendous weight. Power and collective strength come at the expense of private, interpersonal and individual space.